1. Field of the Disclosure
This disclosure relates generally to a fluid transport and filtration system, and more particularly to a water transport and filtration system for oil and gas well operations.
2. Description of the Related Art
The “background” description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description which may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present invention.
Water is essential to the oil and gas industry. In an oil or gas well, water is used to cool and lubricate the drillbit and to extract debris. Accordingly, drilling a well may require hundreds of thousands of gallons of water. Water is also recovered as a byproduct of oil and gas wells as produced water.
Furthermore, the process of hydraulic fracture uses a large amount of water. Hydraulic fracture, or fracking, is a commonly used process to increase production and recovery in an oil or gas well. In hydraulic fracture, fluid is injected at high pressure into a well to crack or fracture the rock structures possessing hydrocarbons. The fracture width is usually maintained through the use of a proppant such as sand, ceramic, or other particulates. Maintaining the fracture width allows hydrocarbons to flow to the surface of the well. In additition to fracturing the rock, water also serves as a transport medium for the proppant. Accordingly, the hydraulic fracture process requires millions of gallons of water per well. Often, a large percentage of the water used in hydraulic fracture is recovered as flowback water.
Consequently, oil and gas companies must supply oil and gas wells with the requisite amount of water, and must manage the flowback and produced water recovered from the well. To accommodate the supply need, water is typically transported through temporary pipelines or trucked to the well site. However, water recovered from the well is unclean and filled with hydrocarbons, suspended solids, heavy metals, and bacteria. The recovered water must therefore be filtered and cleaned before it can be reused in the fracking process or introduced into the environment. For this reason, the recovered water is typically trucked from the well site to a filtering location, and then trucked from the filtering location to its next destination. The process of using trucks to transport the water increases the volume of traffic on roads and requires fossil fuels to power the trucks. Similarly, a company may construct a piping system to pump the water through the piping system to and from a filtering location, but such a piping system is a considerable expense. As an alternative to transporting the water by truck or constructing a piping system, a filtering company may set up a facility at the well site to filter the water, or bring in a large filtration system attached to a trailer to reuse the flowback water for the hydraulic fracturing process. However, this requires additional expense to set up a filtering facility. Furthermore, once the hydraulic fracture process is complete, the recovered water must be transported to another location.
Historically, filtration systems have been too large or too heavy to allow for easy transport. This is especially true because the overall weight of a water transportation truck is regulated by the Department of Transportation.